Cafepress & Zazzle A Store Owners Diary Journey
Hi my name is Jmcks or should I say James McKenna, Jmcks being my Label which is short for James McKenna. I started out building Cafepress stores in 2011, since then I have managed to cover many topics of interest and implement them into my designs. From Summer T-shirts such as Travel T-shirts or Country & Cities Of The World T-shirts & Apparel. I am moving on with even more topics of interest. My main focus throughout this was Originality. When you make a sale its very self rewarding in the knowledge a buying customer shared your creativity. Knowing a person finds a connection with your design is a great feeling, this then is what I seek its such a great buzz and a boost giving me inspiration to keep going forward. I must admit sales can drop at times and you can get very disheartened, especially when you start to rattle your brains and try to figure it out why! going over data putting more marketing effort inn, only to see sales come to a stand still can make you feel like throwing the towel inn. And then out the blue again sales start to climb!. Given all I’ve learnt and to be totally honest I still cannot make heads or tales of why sales act and play out the way they do.
www.jmcks.comwww.jmcks.comI am happy to say I now have T-shirt & Apparel categories covering Animals & Wildlife Clothing, Science Fiction & Movies Clothing, Fairies & Enchanted Clothing, Sports & Hobbies Clothing, Special Occasions Clothing, Christian & Biblical Clothing plus much much more. People think just uploading your designs placing them on products is all there is to it. Not so! like anything you have to learn all there is to know about SEO, otherwise you could have the most amazing product and be all-alone in cyberspace if no one can find your website. Googles algorythms are somewhat always changing so keeping up with these recent changes or your website is a must, one minute you could be hitting first page and the next your website has dropped rankings .
You also have to learn how to market your products religiously! without being spammy or Google can penalise your website. Remebering to also update each and every store you have created its a hell of alot to take on. If you really want to get your Label out there and build a brand would usually takes teams of people all with there own special talent. Trying to learn each and every skill all by your little old self and compete with the big boys can be a daunting task. So you have to ask yourself is it worth it? Only time will tell and by checking my Sales As They Happen webpage, I post all my Store Sales from each POD service in real time.
Anyone who follows my stores will know how much I promote any free way I can. I can never be accused of not keeping up with this venture, and I have kept at it ever since. Working 7:30am 10pm at night 5 days a week is the quite normal in this business. I see alot of discussions in forums, individuals who are still struggling to make sales with there artwork and do not seem to be getting anywhere, no matter how they try. Having read some success stories in the beginning I found I had to try these Pod Stores out for myself. So I signed up with Cafepress. After the first few months and with my first 50 designs uploaded I started to sell. Well I was delighted as you can imagine. Even some of the most successful people with Cafepress said ’Quote’ if you sell 1 or 2 designs during your first year your doing extremely well. This then was all the encouragement I needed and I actually went on to sell a whole lot more with Cafepress that same year.
It was all the encouragement I needed, As I mentioned earlier originality was my main focus, trying to appeal to many different types of art lovers topics and interests.
I felt if store owners could follow my trail e.g my website & online stores and sales, and see how much work I am putting into this, this then would give them a pretty good run down of what to expect.
I Just Recently Added This
http://www.jmcks.com/sales-as-they-happen.html
Its now 2014 And I designed and created over 1,200 designs and uploaded them to Cafepress and some of my other Pods services such as Zazzle & Spreadshirt in the hope of gaining more exposure and therefore even more sales. Again all these sales are listed on the url above. No personal information is given about the sales except
Date Of Sale - Product Purchased & Country. This then will give you
some feedback and confirmation of the sale itself.
So please visit my store & share with family & friends alike,
and thanks for reading
Jmcks
www.jmcks.com

Medieval Mythical Dragon T-shirts & Apparel
